Student Association President Shaun Crisler unveiled proposed budgets for the SA magazine and improvements for organization offices at the inaugural meeting of the SA Media Board.

Crisler will request $19,247, which is subject to the approval of the SA Senate, from the general reserve fund to pay for the magazine for the rest of the academic year.

“It can’t be supplemental funding, so the only place it can come from is the general reserve,” Crisler said.

When combined with the $17,436.35 already spent on the magazine from Crisler’s Sept. 21 executive allocations budget, the total cost of the magazine will grow to $36,683.35.

The magazine is called Huskie Highlights, and its purpose is to highlight the accomplishments of student organizations.

“The goal is to keep it positive,” Crisler said.

Although there is an editor, Crisler will retain some creative control over the magazine to make sure it has “taste” and appropriate focus. He said he will review the magazine before it is printed so he understands the reasoning behind what will be published.

“It’s as independent as a magazine can be [that is] funded by student fees,” Crisler said.

Six thousand copies of the magazine will be published monthly. Crisler said he thinks it doesn’t make sense to print more copies until a readership is built.

“With any small grassroots effort, you definitely want to try small,” Crisler said. “I don’t want to print 25,000 copies just to have 25,000 copies. It doesn’t make sense for this to be the first time and print 25,000.”

Crisler said he will explore increasing the amount of copies published each month if the magazine is received well by students.

“I definitely want to build a readership,” Crisler said. “I want to get them in the residence halls [and] get them in the different complexes and make sure people are reading them. I hope 6,000 copies is way short.”

The first issue of the magazine is almost finished, said Allison Thompson, SA director of public affairs. The first issue should be published before the end of the month.

“With this being the first issue and not many people outside of the SA knowing about the Huskie Highlights, it’s been a little bit of a matter of filling space, too,” Thompson said. “I think that this first issue is probably going to be a lot SA-orientated, and then with the goal in the future to obviously have it just be ‘organizationally focused.’”

Crisler also presented the board with a $12,341.15 budget for improvements to the organization offices at Campus Life Building, Suite 190. Of the proposed budget, $12,129.50 is for new computers; the rest will go to office supplies.

This funding is in addition to the $4,830 spent on providing the offices with Internet access and phones. If the senate approves the additional expenditures, the SA will have spent $17,171.15 on improving these offices.

“Those offices are not user-friendly, which is probably why they are not being used,” Thompson said.

SA Vice President Andrew Becerra and Crisler will meet with the organizations that currently have offices to explain the updates to the offices. Becerra and Crisler also will explain that these groups will be expected to begin holding regular office hours.

“We don’t want to make an investment this large and have people not utilize their offices,” Crisler said.

The senate created the media board Oct. 20 to oversee areas within the SA pertaining to technical services, organizational Web sites and any other major media outlets.